


Stubborn

by Chaifootsteps, JAStitches



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Bondage, Bondage and Discipline, Dirty Talk, M/M, Sex Toys, Sticky Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-09-21 12:28:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9549011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaifootsteps/pseuds/Chaifootsteps, https://archiveofourown.org/users/JAStitches/pseuds/JAStitches
Summary: In which Prowl and Arcee do their best to navigate their frequently questionable, occasionally affectionate, mutually surprising disaster of a relationship. And have sex.Like, a lot of sex.Co-written with Tacticianzephine.





	1. Good boy

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter warnings: Consensual bondage, dirty talk, teasing, sex toys.

Prowl's mind had always been a strange place, though his reasoning and logic behind this little venture had been sound enough.

The idea had been simple. Subjecting the higher-ranking mech to various small pleasures, and having him beg for more. Should he refer to the dominant partner correctly, he would be rewarded. Do so incorrectly, however, and he would be punished. As a result, the black and white mech had become quite the pretty little picture. The determined little sneer on his lip components, yet his arms cuffed together behind his back, his ankles to the legs of his desk chair. Everything exposed for his pink-plated companion to admire.

For Arcee, it was all about the thought process that had led them there.

Don't get him wrong, now. The idea was appealing enough in its own right...he'd yet to have a complaint where Prowl's open, available body was concerned and didn't plan on starting now. But more than bound limbs, more than biolights and steam and the heat of his array, even more than the ridges on his spike, there was the knowledge that Prowl had asked for this.

Prowl, who never asked for anything.

The impressively-molded false spike had been found in a ruin and cleaned (and cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned…) and had since been a recurring guest star in their intimate life. The thing was host to so many ridges that it wasn't funny, and the raised bumps on the tip and along the underside had quickly convinced Prowl that it could stay. It currently sat propped up on the table beside them, the tin of lubricant tellingly open, ready and waiting on the pair.

Arcee's digits trailed lightly over the pressurized spike of his partner, drawing a small grunt from the black and white mech. He chuckled softly.

"You sure about this, Prowl? Just say the word and the cuffs come off."

Keeping up his usual, passive, near-smirk, Prowl responded with a determined snark that almost always came off as a challenge. "Do your worst."

Arcee was quite prepared to rise to that challenge, both figuratively and metaphorically. "Suit yourself."

He'd kept the spike where Prowl could see it, of course. That was the whole point. He took his time slicking it down with lubricant, letting the oil glisten off every little ridge and bump. Slippery digits parted the dark mesh folds of his valve and worked the thick tip in a slow, teasing glide over the enforcer's entrance. Gritted dentae, clenched digits, hips twitching against the sensation…all signs that the enforcer wasn't nearly as frigid as he pretended to be. And especially not about this.

But verbally, he betrayed nothing beyond a soft hiss.

When it came to Prowl, twitching hips and soft hisses were as good as a pleasure bot's carefully orchestrated wails. Arcee couldn't get enough of them.

Smiling slow and devious, he pressed the thick device in to its hilt.

" _Theeere_ we go..."

Every bit of the larger mech shuddered, his doorwings tapping the back of his desk chair and betraying what otherwise may have nearly gone unnoticed. "Ng... that all you got?"

"Oh, you wish."  Rather unnecessarily, he checked to make sure the toy was seated properly (it was) and that Prowl's external node was resting on one of the bigger ridges (it was.) Then he pulled back, pulled up his own chair, and seated himself very comfortably across from his ally.

When he retrieved the remote, he couldn't help but give it a little flourish. Like he and the remote were old friends.

"Six settings. Let's start with the lowest, _shaaall_ we?"

Without waiting for a response, he flicked the button. The toy vibrated to life -- just the very gentlest buzz.

Prowl’s fists clenched more firmly, and he gritted his denta again. He shivered again, much more noticeably, though he attempted to keep up the façade.

"Sorry, is this the part where I'm supposed to start begging? You'll have to do better than that."

Arcee laughed. A mean, giddy little bark of a laugh.

"Pit no! Where's the fun in that?" He casually stretched his leg between them, nudging the base of the toy with the tip of his pede. "I can do this all day. Mostly because I don't have a vibrating spike buried deep in my valve."

That drew slightly more physical reaction, a more pronounced hip spasm, one that scraped his doorwings lightly against the back of his chair. He let go with a quiet, throaty growl of " _Frag_..."

_Remember the plan,_ Prowl, he reminded himself. _There's a reason for this._

That plan didn't matter quite as much at the moment. For some reason, it seemed much more fun to see how much he could antagonize before the real "torment began."

Arcee chuckled darkly, clearly having the time of his life.

"That's the fun thing about you, Prowl. You've got all your plans planned out, you're as stoic as they come, nothing ever gets by you...but when it comes right down to it? Your node swells up just like anyone else's."

And he cranked up the vibration, as if to enunciate the point.

_Alright, focus._

Prowl shifted around as much as his restraints would allow, face returning to its blank smirk. "I thought this little experiment was for a reason."

"Watching you squirm suits me just fine." Because he was the one calling the shots here, and because it really did. "But since you asked...here's how this is going to work. You salvage as much politeness as you can and ask nice, I'll make it a point to reward you. Don't, and you get punished. Simple as that."

"What do you mean by 'ask nice?'" He knew damn well what he meant, but it was more fun to be sarcastic.

"You know exactly what I mean."

"Not entirely sure I do."

Cheeky little glitch. Arcee took hold of his chin, looking him straight in the optics.

"You call me what I want to be called."

His optics glimmered almost-dangerously, and his smirk widened. "Yes sir."

Arcee's spark lept in his chest, turned, and did an ecstatic little hopskip. It almost reached his optics, with glittered with pure pleasure. "Good boy."

As promised, he turned up the vibration another notch. At the same time, he took it by the handle, working it slowly outwards, ridge by ridge...and then just as slowly back in again.

Prowl maintained a bored-looking expression, though in reality every bit of him wanted to shiver and squirm. The most he betrayed was a more tense gritting of his dentae.

A less astute bot would have missed this. Arcee just carried on working the toy calmly, watching his ally's face with mock nonchalance.

"What's wrong, Prowl? Not liking this?"

"I don't recall saying that. Must be hearing things."

"Really? Huh. Because you don't seem like you're enjoying yourself." Sighing a mock sigh, he suddenly switched off the vibration and took his hand off the toy. "Guess you're just not into this kind of thing..."

The movement that flickered through the larger mech's body was something like a shudder crossed with a cringe. "Nn. What's wrong, Arcee? Can't handle a challenge? You were playing the big mech a klik ago."

Arcee just chuckled and ran an exploratory digit over the mesh of his valve.

"Says the bot who's sitting there soaking wet..."

Another pronounced hip-twitch, and the bored expression cracked for a brief moment. "You're enjoying this too much to just stop and leave me here."

The pink mech slipped two fingers into him, casually stroking upwards towards the tell-tale overheatedness of his ceiling node. "And you're too into this to let me."

“Tch, you wouldn't." His thighs twitched noticeably against the pink mech's touch.

"Wouldn't I?" Arcee mused aloud, rolling his thumb over Prowl's external node. "What a funny little possibility that is..."

"Didn't I mention something about doing your worst? This hardly seems like your worst."

And just like that, Arcee removed his hands.

"My worst? You got it." Toy dangling in his grip, he strolled on back to the other chair, sliding down into a comfortable sprawl. Then, in the short-lived silence between them, he let his panel retract with a very audible _snnkt._ "You don't want to ask politely? I'll play by myself."

Prowl growled, fists clenching, but he said nothing.

Taking that as a 'yes, Arcee, please proceed to self-service in front of me while I'm bound and neglected and dripping all over myself,' Arcee positioned the head at his own entrance. He'd been pressurized against his paneling for some time now, beads of condensation and lubricant gathering on the pink folds of his valve, and the soft shudder he gave as the thick length slid home was not entirely for show.

" _Frag_ ," he chuckled, only a little breathless. "I see why you wanted this thing in the first place..."

Slight creaks and clanks of metal could be heard as Prowl's hands twitched against the restraints. His bored look was quickly fading, optics seeming to darken as his passive smirk became a determined sneer.

Even in the gathering light of his own pleasure, Arcee relished everything about that look. He licked his lips, two fingers idling along the head of his spike while the toy plunged in and out of him. Scrap, but those ridges got the job done...with every inward plunge, they sent an electric shiver along his spinal strut, tapering off into the very tips of his pedes and making him writhe involuntarily.

" _Hnng_...frag, yes..."

The enforcer's whole body twitched against the bindings keeping him largely locked in place, doorwings rattling against the back of the desk chair.

Dammit, he was too revved up for this. He largely had no choice.

 

The desired phrase came in the form of a barely-audible mumble, spoken through clenched dentae and a nearly-bitten glossa.

Arcee's half-lidded optics cocked open, his hand stilling slowly.

"Hmm? what was that?"

The jaw clenching did not ease, but he repeated himself only slightly louder.

"... please. Sir."

The pink mech's grin could have sliced mercury.

"That'll do nicely."

Withdrawing the toy from himself, he settled on his knees before Prowl, quickly giving him what he'd been too stubborn to break for. The toy went in, the vibration went up, and for the first time since they began, Arcee fucked him with it -- loud, wet, and properly rough.

Every bit of the enforcer shuddered against the sudden sensation, wrists and ankles straining at their restraints and vents kicking up. He didn't make a sound initially, however. That was the one measure of self-restraint that his body was not yet betraying.

Arcee didn't push for anything more. Watching Prowl buck and shudder was enough, and he was ravenous for the mere sight of it. His free hand slithered up a broad thigh, teasing at seams, and finally settled around Prowl's straining spike. It was hot in his palm and he wasted no time in thumbing the tip in time to the slide of the toy.

His vocal system finally worked against him, releasing a genuine grunt of something not unlike pure frustration. _"Frag."_

The vibration settings were several feet away, and right now, Arcee had no desire to stop and retrieve it. Each stroke of his partner's spike, every slam of the girth inside him, hard and audibly slick...

He may not have been wound as tightly as Prowl, but he was utterly, thoroughly entranced.

"That's it," he encouraged, voice deep and husky enough to surprise even him. "Let me hear you..."

Screw it. Screw stoicism.

"You're one mean son of a glitch, Arcee," Prowl hissed.

"You like it."

"Yessir," he replied automatically, not even realizing what he said before he did so.

Arcee hummed his deep, deep approval. Favoring Prowl's inner thigh with a parting nip, he gave into the demands of his grossly neglected array and let go of the toy. Not to punish Prowl -- not now, when they were making so much progress -- and certainly not to remove it. Before either of them had enough time to complain, he eased down into the other mech's lap, guiding the tip of the spike into his wet, all too ready valve.

It would be awkward, but it would be doable.

"Scrap," he cursed through his teeth, digits twitchingly wildly against black and white plating. " _Ahhh..._ "

His feistiness was further dispelled by the shift in position, and he growled loudly.

There was no getting around it; Prowl had a fantastic spike. Depending on how Prowl's ego was looking that day, he could stand to be told so -- and if he hadn't been holding the reins today, Arcee might have done so. As it were, he simply let his helm loll, greedingly riding the subtle ribs and substantial point.

Though he supposed that said it all.

Chalk it up to the tension, chalk it up to simply being far more stimulated than he was used to. But the definite thing about the situation was that Prowl had gone from extremely bothered to carnal need to finish.

And quickly racing toward that finish.

Arcee hadn't realized how close he was until Prowl was beneath him. Between the earlier round with the toy and the knowledge that his partner was bound tight, unable to move an inch, caught between the pressure of the false spike below and the gripping heat above...he didn't stand much of a chance.

He gritted his dentae tight, biting back the sounds that fought so desperately to escape. Prowl was having none of it.

"What, I don't get to hear you, after you made it a point that you wanted to hear me?" He managed to keep his voice as even as possible, even despite the enormous effort it was taking not to merely dissolve into growls and moans from the sheer newness of the sensations he was experiencing.

Arcee laughed, wild and happy and totally unconcerned with keeping in character. Drunk on sap, he had to resist the urge to bump his helm to Prowl's chevrons.

"Fair enough...I'm so fragging close and this was a _really_ great idea."

"I'm known to have them from time to time."

His voice was beginning to crack, showing through the growls that he was trying to restrain.

Arcee could have mustered up a few more words of commentary. He just...didn't feel the need. Not when every circuit and every fiber in him was gearing up for the inevitable, and little white pops of static were gathering on his peripheral vision.

" _Frag_ ," he whimpered. " _Fragfragfragscrapboltssonofaglitc_ h..."

Prowl actually chuckled, optics glinting. This was ideal. Perfect way to bring the ball back into his court. So long as he could stave off his rapidly-approaching overload...

... but, breaking the concentration it was taking not to overload didn't seem like an appealing ideal. Better to mess with the pink mech.

If Prowl didn't think that little move would be noticed, he didn't know Arcee. The only thing that could pull him from his enthusiastic tumble towards overload was a challenge.

"Oh, _hell_ no." He set his denta, putting everything he had into holding back.

Prowl growled loudly at him. "Stubborn little son of a glitch, aren't you?"

Arcee shot back a nasty smirk. "Maybe you're just losing your touch."

"Wasn't what you were saying a moment ago."

Stuck for a reply, Arcee rolled his hips down and tightened his valve deliberately. So there.

Prowl grunted in slight surprise, and when he pulled his hips down and away, the false spike pressed against every right spot. He let go with a noise not until a pained growl. Arcee didn't bother gloating. Too concerned with winning this game and maintaining his edge -- and by extension, holding back his own climax -- he repeated the move again. And again. And again.

Not one to be outdone, Prowl squirmed against everything holding him in position. However, there seemed to be no winning against his partner, and his carefully-upheld composure visibly began to crack.

His sneer became a snarl, fists clenched as his wrists strained once more against their bonds, doorwings tapping the back of the chair with every move he made.

Arcee's optics gleamed with desire, intent, and something toeing the line of sadistic. If it had been aimed at anyone else, it would have been more than a little alarming.

"Come on, Prowl," he urged, voice rough. He was so close, he could taste it, but not yet...damn it, not yet. "Break for me."

Prowl exvented with a purr-like growl, then clenched his denta. He pulls harder against the cuffs on his wrists, inadvertently jerking his hips upward.

Sometimes it was the little things.

Sometimes it was the little things putting just right amount of pressure on Arcee's ceiling node.

It was only through supreme luck and no shortage of willpower that he held on, tensing up tight as a wire and offlining his optics against the things that innocuous jerk did to his body.

Cranked up as he was, the enforcer did notice the effects of his unintentional squirming. If anyone was going to break, it would be his smaller partner. Another upwards thrust, Prowl being very careful not to allow the exposed end of the vibrating false spike to come into contact with anything that would majorly disturb it.

Arcee had several advantages in his court, and they all came back to his ability to move unrestrained. This time, he was able to shimmy up in time to avoid a devastating blow, so to speak.

Those ridges still made his head spin, but at least his ceiling node went untouched.

"Nice try, but not gonna happen," he said.

"You're the one suffering, then." Prowl's voice was more strained than ever, breaks in his methodically-upheld façade of complete control becoming more and more obvious, with his twitching optic and faltering snarl. He settled back firmly down into the chair, hissing audibly as the false spike was disturbed again, but certain that if he managed to remain flush against the surface, he'd be fine. He'd win this.

Arcee smiled. It was one of the least trustworthy smiles he'd ever cooked up -- and he'd cooked up a lot.

"You're funny."

In one swift, semi-smooth movement, he twisted back impossibly , spinal strut bent like a bow, snatched up the remote control, and cranked it up as high as it would go.

Every unrestrained part of Prowl reacted. His lower body jerked upward and his head fell back with an almost-pained groan as his optics flickered offline for a moment. A shiver tore through his body, rattling his doorwings even louder than his vents already were rattling. _"Frag!"_

Arcee gnawed on the inside of his lip component, swearing to the Allspark beneath that he could feel the vibrations through Prowl's spike. He rose up and off, adjusted the angle, and came back down to renewed, furious effort.

If he could stop himself from flying off the rail for just a few more minutes, he'd be golden.

As hard as he'd been holding on, Prowl broke first.

His vision dissolved into static, entire body shaking and jerking against Arcee, the false spike, and his restraints. His low voice escaped in something close to a scream.

Arcee had time enough to grin, quietly and wickedly, before his frame gave up the fight. Before his back arched and his hips bucked, digits grabbing the sides of the chair hard enough to ache, glorious white heat ricocheting through every circuit and wire until he dissolved into an inarticulate jumble of yelps and cursing.

In other words? Before he tipped over the edge into the most well-earned, satisfying overload he'd ever known.

After what felt (to Prowl) like an obscenely long time, the enforcer’s frame had resigned itself to its weakly-twitching aftershocks. He fell back against the back of the chair, vents kicking into high gear and intake cycling in short, shallow pants as his frame desperately tried to cool itself.

Arcee pulled himself up from the afterglow slowly and languidly, like a creature rising from the swamp. His abdomen was painted liberally with faintly shining transfluid and he didn't see anything resembling a problem with that.

"...Well! That was fun!"

Still comfortably seated on Prowl's spike, he deftly unsnapped the cuffs, switched off the vibration and pulled the toy free. As he rose up and off, those ridges rubbed his oversensitized walls in a fond farewell.

"You good? Want me to get the water?"

Despite no longer being bound, Prowl made no move to change position, head still lolled back, though his optics came back online with their regular icy tint.

"... You are, without a doubt, an abject sadist."

Arcee smiled.

"And clearly, you love it."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spike sucking, valve eating, and bitter ex vibes aplenty.

The ruins were everything one generally expected ruins to be, and everything one might have expected Prowl's home to be. In the short time it had taken Arcee to cross the filthy rain ditch and trudge up the bombed out roads of Petrex, he had dodged the remnants of three skeletal land mines.

(That he hadn't tripped over any of them was as hopeful an omen as he figured he was going to get.)

If there was one comfort he could offer himself, it was that bridging out to Prowl's location in the thinly optimistic hopes that they could get somewhere wasn't the _worst_ decision he'd ever made.

And that really, honestly wasn't saying much.

The ruins were... _creepy,_ to put it blithely. Everything, even the bombed-out husks of buildings, seemed to still pulse weakly with the effort not to just crumble and die like the rest of the planet. Somehow, Petrex itself (not that the wreckage of this particular town bore any distinction from the others in the region -- at least, not to an outsider) seemed even more desperate to cling to identifiability as a place where beings had once lived.

This stubbornness, unwillingness to yield to utter destruction, made for a very unsettling atmosphere. If the town itself remained in any sort of standing state, it would be easy for anyone with any measure of paranoia to believe that any kind of undesirable presences could be hiding between the devastated buildings.

Only, in this particular case, that paranoid someone would be absolutely correct in fearing what lurked in the ruins.

Not about to spend the afternoon poking through ruins and flipping through waste bins, Arcee fired up his comm.

::Alright, Prowl. I'm here. Where are you?::

::... Around,:: came the reply. ::Closer than you'd think.::

And truthfully, he was. The rundown communications hub that he'd hidden away in was underground, easily accessed by the maintenance tunnels beneath the city. They allowed him quick and easy travel beneath the ruins, with the ability to pop up virtually anywhere.

Currently, he was certain that while he could see the pink mech, Prowl himself was still just out of view.

::That doesn't help.::  From where he stood, Prowl could be in one of two locations. Either he was in that rickety tower just ahead or... ::Let me guess. You're underground somewhere?::

:: _Pffft._ Please. I'm not some kind of animal.::

His current appearance, however, would suggest otherwise. He'd healed up as well as could be expected from the repeated, intense damage he'd taken lately... well, without receiving adequate medical help.

One optic still missing, plating scratched, dented, and cracked in places. The white parts of him were tinged gray, and the shine had even been dulled on his biolights from the grit. Chevrons bent, one noticeably chipped.His single remaining optic, and his dimmed biolights, glinted from the alleyway just behind Arcee's current position. He smirked almost cruelly as he tapped his comm. cockily.

::How's that surveillance experience working for you?::

For a long, tense moment, Arcee simply took him in. The unhealthy grey pallor, the surface damage, the visible layer of grit and neglect. That gruesome space where his optic had been..

He tried to recall the sharp, clean, professional contrast between black and polished white, and found that he could not.

"Better than the 'vagabond with a cause' plan is working out for you," he replied. "You look like slag."

"I apologize for existing in a space not meant to be lived-in full time," Prowl countered flatly. The empty socket twitched almost grotesquely, and his lip components parted in something close to a sneer, revealing a couple of his denta to be chipped. "Did you just come up here to insult me? Because if this is how you define 'wanting to talk,' then my memory of what that phrase means must be clouded."

In the interest of diplomacy, Arcee refrained from asking what part of his elaborate new scheme precluded washing every once in a while. "Fair enough. Let's talk."

"Here in the open, or would you prefer to seek something resembling cover?"

Prowl's suggestion of taking cover was nothing short of laughable, considering the blatant lack of it around them. Certainly, there was plenty of rubble to hide behind, but its structural integrity was questionable at best.

The other thing that made the statement almost funny, however, was the fact that Prowl was not visibly being sarcastic. At all.

Arcee was not terribly surprised. As low as Prowl had sunk, he hadn't thought he was literally living out of a gutter. "Out of the open works."

"... I take it you're not stupid enough to follow me very far." Prowl gestured to the building beside the alley he'd appeared in. "This one is stable."

"Stable's a plus," Arcee commented dryly.

"No need to sound so enthusiastic," he shot back, turning around, starting down the alleyway and disappearing into the structure.

Having spent more than his fair share of nights in empty buildings, Arcee wasn't terribly put off by this. He slunk in after Prowl, mindful of where he stepped, trying to piece together in increments just what sort of building this had been before the war.

As if picking up on the pink mech's curiosity, but still maintaining his trademark difficulty, Prowl did begin to speak, though didn't offer the answer to the building's original purpose.

"Hard to believe that this used to be a thriving town, isn't it? Entire city-state was demolished because we fought until there was nothing left to fight over. At least Iacon, Kaon, and the others just quit before they were destroyed."

In the now-mostly-confined space, it was much easier to hear that even Prowl's voice sounded terrible.

Arcee was less interested in a history lesson than the question of whether or not Prowl was literally rusting from within. "What _was_ this place?"

"Just a little shop. Sold every literature chip you could imagine. Not everyone knew how to read most of them, but those of us that did practically had open tabs here."

"And it hasn't been completely ransacked yet?"

"Half of the street behind this building was incinerated; most of the chips were ruined when the explosion knocked the shelves to the ground. There isn't much left."

"Hm," Arcee mused noncommittally.

Realistically speaking, there were probably some chips that had made it through the war intact. If he knew Prowl, they were now square in Prowl's possession.

"So. I assume you didn't come to talk Praxian history. What do you want?"

"I'd like to sort out this thing where we're at each other's throats from a distance. Even if we're never going to be on the same team again, the last thing either of us needs is another enemy."

Prowl laughing in any sense, even as a word filler, was always unnerving. The low, throaty chuckle that escaped him now was just made far worse by whatever was causing him to sound like that. "One less than everyone is still better than everyone, I'll give you that," he agreed, leaning back against a wall as if to prove its structural integrity by forcing it to tolerate his added weight.

Arcee was one of the few bots in existence who didn't mind Prowl's non-laughter. His optics flickered to the place where his weight met the wall, just for the faintest suggestion of an instant. "The Autobots are more than what Prime's doing right now," he said. "I stand by all the calls I made back then."

"Optimus has forgotten what we fought for," Prowl accused flatly. "He's so far in denial about his reality, he's practically Red Alert on a good day."

Arcee almost smirked at that. "Never said he wasn't."

"If I ever see his sorry faceplates again, I'll be sure he walks away seeing my point." The vacant socket twitched again, and Prowl’s snarl returned. "And they call _me_ a bad cop."

"If that's the case, you might want to think about taking better care of yourself. Or you know...taking care of yourself at all."

That Prowl was alive at all was seeming like more and more of a miracle.

That seemed to get more of a rise out of the enforcer than anticipated, but he didn't fire back immediately. His fists merely clenched, and everything on him glowed just a little higher through the layer of dust and gray tinge. "You would be surprised just how difficult your apparent brand of self-care is out here."

"Just being practical. You're not going to force your point on anyone unless you drink a cube every now and then. Or steal one. I don't know how you've been operating up here."

"I'm not starving," he argued. "... if you want to know the truth, fuel is the least of my worries."

"Are you dying?" Arcee asked. It was hard to tell if he was being sarcastic.

"Clearly not. My current condition is indicative of nothing but my lack of proper medical supplies and the unsurprising difficulty I've been having finding a functioning shower."

"Well, that's something. If I'm coming all this way, I guess it's fair to admit that I don't particularly want to see you fall apart at the joints and die."

It was delivered with all the warmth of a February day in Greenland, but the one thing it was not was sarcastic.

"... Appreciated." He flexed the joints in his fingers very briefly, then straightened from his place against the wall and crossed the space to where a counter apparently once stood. "... Is this your idea of 'working through things,' then? Making sure I'm not legitimately dying?"

Arcee slid easily into a pace that matched his, step for step, until the counter was between them. Not too much consideration and for once, not too much overthinking...it simply seemed the thing to do.

"It's a start."

"Is that so?"

Prowl leaned forward on the counter, something making a creaking sound. Whether that something was Prowl himself, or the counter, was difficult to say.

As if from another mech's body, some other mech's life, Arcee watched himself lean in and meet the enforcer halfway

"You that surprised, Prowl?"

"Mildly." He didn't elaborate on this, instead choosing to comment on the smaller mech's action. "... something I can do for you?"

In the blink of an optic, Arcee reached across the dwindling space between them, hooked his fingers into Prowl's chassis, and tugged him in close, meeting in a brief, but furious clash of lips.

Even at the very best of times, they'd never kissed for long.

" _Glitch_ ," he growled, still holding tight to unpolished metal. "Do you think I don't recognize what you're doing? It hasn't been _that_ long."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." The cocked optic ridge and the less-than-predatory posture seemed to agree, but the mech-eating smirk seemed to suggest that Prowl knew precisely what he was talking about.

"You don't? Well, must have been my imagination, then." And there was the sarcasm. Arcee let go of his chassis. "Let's just forget that ever happened and go back to talking about how much Prime glitched everything up. We were having so much fun with that, remember?"

With surprisingly quick reflexes for a mech in his sorry state, Prowl's hand clamped down on Arcee's wrist, preventing him from completely pulling his own hand away. _There_ was the predatory gaze. The near-sadistic smirk. Both of these things made even more intense by the enforcer's dangerous-looking state.

Of course, nothing about his action was accompanied by any type of verbal statement. No witty one-liner, no snide remark. Just the force of his grip, the curl of his smirk, and the glint of his remaining optic.

Arcee's grin was sharp as razor wire. Anyone else, he would have whipped around and gutted them, or snapped off their arm at the joint.

With Prowl, however…

"That's more like it."

 "Is _this_ why you came up here? I thought it 'hadn't been that long.'"

Arcee snorted. "It's not, but I'll take this."

"Pfft. Slut."

"Says the mech who's leaning all over the table like he's starring in a cheap static vid."

"Says the mech who recognizes what someone starring in a cheap static vid looks like," Prowl countered.

"Cheap static vid stars don't usually stand around being catty when they could be putting their mouths to better use."

"Such as?"

"Such as use your imagination," said Arcee, who was quite ready to put aside their little game in favor of something actually happening.

Prowl chuckled and stepped back, not bothering to let go of Arcee's arm and instead, giving it a sharp forward tug. Arcee was jerked forward and, with astounding accuracy, found himself stomach down on the filthy counter, his palms making an imprint in the dust.

And as it happened, this was exactly where he wanted to be.

Prowl wanted slutty? He'd get slutty.

"There you go," he encouraged condescendingly, stretching out and arching his back like a cybercat in heat. The enforcer growled, folding his arms across his chestplate.

"You're making this far too easy."

Arcee shot a look over his shoulderplate, which wasn't easy considering.

"What? My panel's stone cold and shut. So far, all you've done is throw me down like a rude fragger, and I'm admiring the view of your dirty, dirty floor."

Prowl shook his head, crossing and crouching down enough to tip Arcee's face upward by a single finger beneath his chin. "Don't lie to me. You don't get like this until you're at least lukewarm."

It was unexpected enough and attractive enough that Arcee didn't snap at his finger simply because it was there. This was the side of Prowl he liked, and it was pure luck that his fans didn't kick up right then and there.

"Keep that up and I might make it all the way up to tepid."

"You're funny." He withdrew his hand, dragging the finger from beneath Arcee's chin with enough pressure to scratch, and moved to stand straight, placing his free hand on the counter for momentary balance.

The shiver that ran up Arcee's back was strong enough to be visible. Though Prowl rose up, he stayed right where he was.

"I try."

"Clearly not hard enough."

Taking the hint, Arcee edged forward as far as his current position would allow. He nipped a smooth, straight trail along the thickest ridge of Prowl's interface array, teasing, debating whether he wanted to extend his tongue to that unwashed plating.

The answer, of course, was that he'd tasted far worst.

Several nips in, Prowl would find himself favored with an unexplected lick along the seam of his inner thigh.

Prowl growled, gripping the back of Arcee's head. "What do you think you're doing?"

"What do you _think?"_ Arcee replied.

"I'd tell you to get that out of your mouth since you don't know where it's been, but I've no idea where your mouth's been either."

The pink mech smirked darkly. "Sucking every spike I can get my lips around?"

He hadn't and neither of them were stupid enough to believe it, but he wasn't saying it to pass a fact check.

"You're the one who said it, not me."

"Look at you go with your listening comprehension." And he licked his lips, a surefire tell that he was into this. Arcee never drew attention to his lips if he didn't have a good reason.

" _Aww_." The unsettling-sounding cooing noise was beyond sarcastic as he released his grip on the pink mech's helm and tilted his chin up again. "You're almost funny when you're trying to be sarcastic."

Arcee shuddered dramatically, though he let his head be tilted without a fuss.

"Ugh, don't say 'aww.' It's creepy as Pit coming from you."

"Still working on those manners, I see."

"I was before you pulled my head away."

"Oh, then, by all means."

For all his backsass, Arcee dove back in with a will, licking and nibbling and generally doing everything in his power to coax the heavy panel into retracting.  He'd never admit it, but it had been a long, long time since he'd enjoyed doing this for anyone, and Prowl was solely to thank for that.

Considering the thickness of the plating, it was usually quite difficult to tell exactly how heated up Prowl actually was. It was one of the many, many reasons that he was a difficult mech to be intimate with. He examined the ends of his digits as if bored. "You know, I could go easy on you and unlock that myself."

Arcee glanced up at him, somewhere between exasperated and amused. He didn't reply, nor did he lift his head away.

He just put his mouth right on Prowl's hip seam and sucked it like he'd missed it.

As good at bluffing as Prowl was, it was his engine revving lewdly that ultimately gave him away. Still, since he didn't jerk, squirm, or make any sort of vocal noise, whether the _snnklikt_ of his panel unlocking and sliding about a quarter of the way up was reflex or his being "polite" was still debatable.

A quarter of the way was a quarter victory. Arcee slipped his glossa in through the gap, not so much trying for a lick as teasing him with the possibility. Prowl snarled, but his panel did retract the rest of the way, and Arcee hummed approvingly, though he wasted no time in getting down to work. Wetting his lips, he plunged down the length, letting Prowl's spike pressurize in the slick, hungry heat of his mouth.

He growled around it, dark and deeply possessive.

Prowl made no move to pull away, but one hand did settle heavily on the back of the pink helm.

"You'll have to do better than that," he stated evenly, sounding more bored and annoyed than anything.

Arcee carried on as though he hadn't even heard him. As though the weight and warmth of Prowl on his tongue was something to savor, and he had all the time in the world to do so, and there was nothing in the world calling his attention elsewhere; nothing to stop him from lapping biolights and tasting beads of tranfluid.

Why rush?

Prowl allowed it for a relatively surprising length of time, before pulling the pink mech's head off, accompanying the action with a quiet growl.

Arcee looked up at him, clearly rather proud of himself.

"I think you might be getting the best of this deal."

He arched an optic ridge. "Am I?"

"From this angle, yes."

For a mech supposedly running on low fuel intake, Prowl's next spurt of movement was certainly quick and fluid.

He moved to the other side of the counter, pulling Arcee upright, turning him around and pushing him down onto his back, keeping one hand firmly on his abdominal plating and planting the other on the counter.

Arcee, who had expected another side remark, could only blink up at the ceiling. He was neither the biggest mech out there, nor the heaviest, but still. It was rough, demanding, and the sort of thing he would steadfastly deny enjoying to anyone else.

One thing was for sure...there was no hiding the roar of his fans anymore.

Prowl's expression had suddenly gone from a predatory smirk to a downright ravenous grin. The hand on Arcee's abdomen maintained firm pressure, while it would not realistically keep him in place if he _really_ wanted to get up. But he highly doubted that the pink mech would want to be getting up any time soon.

The sound of fans working overtime nearly drowned out Prowl's low, quiet chuckle. "How about this angle?"

Arcee pushed up and against the hand purely to test its power as a restraint. When Prowl didn't give, it took everything he had not to shiver visibly, and to keep his voice as even as this game demanded.

"...Angle's not bad."

A few well-planned shifts of his body and arms settled Prowl in easy reach of most of Arcee's lower half. The look he threw upward toward the pink mech's face was positively devious as he dragged his glossa slowly down his abdomen toward his interface panel, stopping just short of the top ridge.

Damn Prowl and damn that look. And damn that glossa in particular.

Arcee cycled a breath -- as deep as he could while still being subtle about it. That had always, _always_ driven him wild, and of course his former partner would waste no time in employing it. His fingers twitched, his knees twitched with the urge to part, but he didn't retract his panel.

 He didn't intend on being the hardest nut to crack, but he wasn't going down without at least a token fight.

Despite not having done this very much for this partner in particular, Prowl's mouth was no stranger to interface panels. He scraped his denta over the top ridge, then traced intricate shapes over the panel with the tip of his glossa.

Arcee didn't hold out as long as he possibly could, but he held out as long as he wanted to. He retracted his panel smoothly, as if it were no big issue to be lying spread out on his back on a filthy countertop in a ruined building. As if he weren't impossibly pressurized and soaking, soaking wet.

Prowl's resulting noise was something akin to an amused chuckle crossed with a low growl. Though, why in Pit's name would he make this easy?

He continued to trace his glossa slowly, teasingly, around the various bits of Arcee's array, pausing at the seams on the sides and the base of the spike.

Almost as if only to be cruel, he dragged his glossa slowly upwards along the pink mech's valve before starting to move away from it again.

Although he was aching to buck his hips, following that glossa like a lost cyberkitten following someone home, Arcee managed to pull through with nothing more damning than a hard gulp.

"…Enjoying yourself down there?"

"Has anyone ever told you you're incredibly transparent, Arcee?"

"People tell me I'm a lot of things." He propped himself up on his elbow to get a better look at the face hovering between his legs. "Eat me out sometime before the next quadricycle and you can call me whatever you want."

"Impatient little thing, aren't you?" His glossa traced dangerously close to the other mech's valve, before moving over it again in slow, lazy strokes.

Arcee stopped just short of growling aloud, and not purely with sexual frustration. Prowl wasn't pleasuring him to the point where condescending remarks got a brush off.

"I'm beginning to think I should have stayed home with my hand."

"Oh, now that's just _hurtful._ " One hand wrapped tightly around Arcee's spike, and his glossa dipped into his entrance. The lazy glossa-strokes continued only for a few moments, before they became full-on lapping motions, accompanied by the occasional humming noise.

"Your face is hurtf- _ahhh!"_

Arcee stuffed his knuckles in his own mouth, but it wasn't nearly quick enough to stifle the cry. Prowl's pointed lapping was the answer his neglected valve had been looking for, and his spike leaked glistening beads of pastel pink onto the enforcer's fingers.

Just that quickly, Prowl's attitude had become the furthest thing from his mind.

The larger mech chuckled, working his glossa further into the pink mech. The intricate patterns that had been traced around Arcee's array were being flawlessly replicated along the walls of his valve, as Prowl's fingers flexed around his spike.

Somewhere amidst all the twitching and arching, Arcee realized Prowl's strategy: his valve was currently serving as a canvas for the Cybertronian alphabet. Not that he _cared_ , of course; the Cybertronian alphabet had dots, and where there were dots, there were flicks.

He punctuated each one with embarassingly high-pitched yips and squeals.

Prowl withdrew for a moment, releasing Arcee's spike to dab the drips of fluid from his fingers with the tip of his glossa. Arcee seized the opportunity to collect his head, turning up his fans to try and cool down.

"You're a sadist."

Prowl made no move to resume his ministrations, instead settling a hand heavily on one of Arcee's hips. "Apparently, that makes you a masochist."

The pinch mech fixed him with a slurly look. "I'm not begging, if that's what you're after."

"Of course you're not," he said lightly, before quieting and allowing his glossa to return to work. The movements, however, had become much more shallow, lingering just inside of his valve instead of much farther back where they had been.

Arcee knew Prowl making a point when he felt one. He scowled discreetly, but kept his mouth shut, not ready to cave just yet.

He was strong. He could win this. He would not fall apart just because of a stupid glossa in his valve.

Prowl seemed to remain completely unfazed, maintaining a smooth, lazy pace with his glossa while his hands started roaming. Tracing down Arcee's abdominal plating, ghosting over his hips, teasing at the edges of seams and joints. They even moved down along the pink mech's inner thighs, stopping cold just before the backs of his knees.

There, the fingers spread and curled into near-claws to grip tightly at the plating beneath them as the most subtle of shifts on Prowl's end allowed him to press the edges of his denta against the space between Arcee's spike and valve, and wiggle his glossa a little further in, searching for one specific spot.

“ _Hnn_..." It wasn't much, but it was a start -- as was the way Arcee's knees inched apart just the very slightest bit. It was a lot of correct things at once, and the sensation that was gathering recalled the first bubbles in a pot of boiling water.

But when Prowl clawed into him -- held him cruelly, held him open -- that was the red light he'd been subconsciously craving. Prowl's denta pressed him and his glossa slithered inside him, making him whisper a whine into his hand, and it all suddenly seemed so inevitable.

He knew where this was heading. He knew what that glossa was searching for.

He knew exactly how quickly he was going to lose this game if it succeeded.

Prowl's tangled, glyph-shape patterns had been completely abandoned, in favor of a purposeful sweeping motion. His glossa swept thoroughly along the top of Arcee's valve as his grip on the pink mech's thighs tightened very noticeably.

Arcee tried another slow exhale, but only ended up squirming. And in doing so, he inadvertently put that glossa swipe right where it needed to be.

 He arched like a bow, restraining grip be damned. And he cried out.

A long, high, thoroughly whimper laden cry.

Whatever noise Prowl made in response (it was either a growl or a laugh, honestly, there was no way to tell) was reduced to a menacing rumble. His glossa continued to trace over the spot, changing his pattern again. This time, it was spelling out a random string of Cybertronian expletives.

Prowl adjusted his hold on Arcee's thighs again, moving carelessly enough that he left scratches in the smaller mech's paint.

Arcee felt him laughing. He felt it in the softest part of himself, and he couldn't even retaliate. He was completely at Prowl's mercy and as long as he carried on working that spot indefinitely, he didn't even care.

" _Oh frag...oh fragohfragohfraaaaag..._ "

It had to be some kind of cosmic rule: Prowl couldn't go five minutes without some measure of sadism or cruelty, or his drives would crash. There was no other explanation. Case in point, he stopped completely cold, withdrawing from Arcee's valve with a sadistic smirk.

Arcee keened like he'd been stabbed in the foot -- or denied a box of rust sticks that he really, really wanted. It was surprising how much overlap there was between the two.

Either way, the look he fixed Prowl with could have murdered.

" _Bastard._ "

"Now who's getting the best of this deal?" he taunted, releasing one of Arcee's thighs in order to idly drag one knuckle along the very outside of his valve.

"Two wrongs don't make a right, you know."

 "Oh, I know. I find it takes at least three."

"You're not funny," Arcee lied. He wriggled as far as he could, scraping for stimulation like a beggar. "Fine...what are your terms?"

"'What are my terms?'" Prowl chuckled. "You sound like a hostage negotiator."

"Don't do it, Prowl," he quipped dryly. "You don't want to shoot all these people."

His hand snuck downwards, stealing a defiant rub of his exterior node.

"You laugh, they often sound exactly that bored."

"You don't say."

He knew he was pushing his luck, but Prowl's treatment was borderline torturous; a small taste of something he'd been craving for Primus knew how long. Throwing etiquette to the winds, he coddled his node between his thumb and forefinger.

" _Ah, ah_." A sharp smack landed on the side of Arcee’s hand. "Rude."

He growled, but didn't press the issue. Nor did he offer any indication that the reprimand did anything to him.

" _Fine._ Then just...damn it, do _something_ to me."

"Hm. And here I was thinking of letting you pick what happens next." His optic glittered with something close to hunger. "But, if you'd rather I did..."

That glitter.

Primus, give him strength.

"Am I going to regret it if I do?"

"Is that a risk you're willing to take?"

Well, he'd come this far.

"Sure. Why not?"

Prowl grabbed his wrist, pulling him up and taking several steps back toward the remains of the shop window. As he sat down on the sill of it, he yanked Arcee down into his lap.

Just as with the first time, Arcee was caught off guard. The broken buildings were silhouetted by the filth of the window; like ragged, crooked nails. He was panting harder than he'd known. Prowl's spike was hot and ridged between his legs, taunting him with the nearness of it.

" _Scrap_..."

He reached for it with a shaking hand, waiting to see whether Prowl would stop him.

The enforcer didn't move, which wasn't saying much, considering how fast he'd proven himself to be capable of moving, but the lack of change in his expression was a good sign.

Arcee wasn't about to wait around for a greener light. Taking the ridged length in hand, his ventilations hitched and stuttered as he guided Prowl to his valve mesh and slowly, slowly sank down to the base.

The act of reaching it was "rewarded," for lack of a better term, by the larger mech's tight grip on his hips. Prowl's expression still did not change, though a shudder did escape down his spinal strut.

Although he was held too tightly to move, Arcee had no objections yet. He hunched in Prowl's lap, digits clawing into the windowsill, focused on nothing but being filled to the brink.

He'd missed this.

_Primus,_ how he'd missed this.

Prowl chuckled darker than before. "Something you want to say there, Arcee?"

Arcee raised his head, optics hooded and smoking. "...Couple of things, yeah."

"Well? Spit 'em out."

"Make me."

"Now where's the fun in that?"

Prowl's hold tightened on Arcee's hips, now pressing them firmly downward. He leaned in dangerously, scraping his denta over a cable in Arcee's neck before biting down on it.

Arcee didn't think of resisting. More importantly, he didn't think to be anxious about Prowl's access to his neck. The sound he made was a squeal, a moan, and a shriek all coming together in the furthest thing from harmony.

"Mm, was that it?" the enforcer taunted from just beneath his audial.

" _Frag you,_ " Arcee whimpered.

His hips had started rocking fitfully against Prowl's length; optics totally offlined, like there was nothing in the world but him and those ridges.

"I know you haven't forgotten how this works," he purred. "You have to tell me what you want."

Damn him. Damn him and the tube they pulled his spark out of.

The look in Arcee's optics could have killed several times over, but more than that, it was hungry. Desperately, ravenously hungry.

"Frag _me_."

Prowl chuckled again. He remained where he was, scraping denta over cables beneath the pink mech's audial, but his vice-like grip on Arcee's hips vanished.

" _Good boy._ "

Arcee moaned in helpless, ecstatic agony. Shifting his grip from the windowsill to Prowl's plating, he wasted no time in driving himself on the the enforcer's thick spike. Hard, fast, and audibly, obscenely wet.

Whatever it took to keep Prowl inside him.

Whatever it took to get him to say that again.

The growl that escaped the enforcer was less controlled than he would've liked; a low rumble of a sound that shuddered through his chassis.

"Frag..."

It had been too damn long to worry about appearances. Now that they were in the thick of it, Arcee grew less and less interested in doing so.

" _Frag,_ _you feel amazing_..."

Prowl smirked, reaching up with one hand and turning Arcee's face toward his own in order to lock their optics for a moment. It had almost always been a move of his that attempted to assert dominance, even when their physical relationship had been well-established... and extant.

If Prowl wanted dominance, Arcee was prepared to give it...at least for that moment. It took him back to their less tumultuous days together, when they'd operated in something vaguely resembling harmony and said a lot of unthings during interface.

He met Prowl's optics unflinchingly, but without challenging. Letting his former partner see everything there was to see.

The enforcer's smirk broadened for a brief moment before Arcee's face was released, freeing up the hand to settle on Arcee's chestplates, fingers digging idly at seams in the armor.

Arcee groaned, shivering beneath this touch. His chestplate hadn't been as abused as his neck, but it was impossible to forget that once upon a time, someone had driven their fingers into his now-racing spark.

He let Prowl touch anyway.

Maybe it was out of respect, maybe just a coincidence, but Prowl didn't pay more attention to Arcee's chestplates. He merely left his hand where it was while his other one settled heavily on the pink mech's hip.

The low growl of the encounter's second "good boy" was the real surprise.

If Arcee hadn't been so firmly anchored to all things physical, he would have been on another plane of existence. In spite of everything, he couldn't get enough of Prowl's touch. Of his spike. Of his filthy, filthy praise.

And it was killing him.

" _Damn it, Prowl..._ " he keened, hissed, whimpered. Without venom, without teeth. "The counter...c'mon..."

"What about it?" Prowl purred nonchalantly, the hand placed on Arcee's chest moving lazily downward toward his hips. "You really need to be more specific."

Arcee narrowed his eyes in irritation, but made no move to stop him.

"I want it on the counter."

Prowl's fingers brushed slowly over the pink mech's abdominal plating as he leaned in to tease Arcee's neck cables again. "You want what on the counter?"

The sounds Arcee made could have been the start of several curses, but never quite made it.

" _I want you to spike me hard on my back, on the counter. Happy?_ "

 " _Very._ "

Prowl stood up in one fluid movement, not even bothering to move Arcee out of his lap. He crossed carefully back to the counter, setting Arcee down on the edge of it in order to readjust his balance.

Arcee, who hadn't really been expecting to get what he wanted, didn't even try to wipe the pleased grin from his face. He leaned back and spread his legs like a dirty king.

"Perfect..."

Heavy hands settled on Arcee's waist, pinning him to the counter as Prowl picked up a rough, steady pace. The enforcer's glossa and denta, on the other hand, returned to Arcee's neck cables, teasing and biting in sporadic patterns and random places.

Arcee wasted no time in digging his digits back into Prowl's shoulders, legs wrapping around his waist like they belonged there. He tipped his head, offered up his neck, and vowed to worry about the consequences later.

" _Primus, yes...frag me..._ "

 "You're adorable when you're this needy," the enforcer growled against the pink mech's neck, the tip of his glossa flicking out to tease the gap between two cables.

The strangest thing about the statement was the exclusion of Prowl's usual "almost" qualifier. "Almost adorable" had been uttered countless times before, but never, _never_ , just plain, unedited "adorable."

Although Arcee knew better than to read too deeply into that, he was too far gone not to enjoy it. His spark tilted foolishly, his head doing the same each time Prowl plunged into him. His blunt digits could only do so much damage, but the trail of dents and chipped paint they were leaving was getting impressive.

(The damage did not go unnoticed, but it did go largely unacknowledged. His paintjob was already seventy percent ruined, why care what damage was done now?)

Prowl's pace quickened, though his thrusts, for the moment, remained relatively shallow. He'd never admit it out loud, but fragging _Pit_ he'd missed this.

Arcee was meeting him thrust for thrust -- both in the interest of reciprocity and in an attempt to get him deeper. He was just starting to get to the point where deeper sounded like a great idea. His back was getting coated in grime and they were being watched by several  turborats.

Neither of these things seemed like a problem.

 "Are you just the neediest little thing?" Prowl teased lightly, letting go of him with one hand in order to idly stroke the pink mech's spike.

Arcee arched back and just moaned, because _yes._ Yes, he was.

Even the light touch was enough to slicken Prowl's palm. He'd hit that point where staying still was beyond him, and keeping the rising knot of tension down was rapidly threatening the same. He was almost positive that his overload was going to be wet; the best ones always were.

" _Scrap,_ " he cursed. " _I'm...I..._ "

He wasn't quite there yet, but a frantic, aimless hand gesture conveyed the general idea.

Prowl switched tactics almost instantly, driving harder and deeper into him at a brutally-fast pace. _Frag..._

If he could hold out until Arcee overloaded, this would be a complete success.

In Arcee's mind, this had ceased to be a competition ages ago. Even if it had been, he would have lost spectacularly.

All of a sudden, his circuits were all shooting off at once; an ungovernable cascade of white fireworks from the tip of his helm to the bottoms of his pedes. It was beyond the realm of painful thought that followed from day to day, beyond concern for what this would mean.

And sure enough, it was wet.

The hand on Arcee's spike hadn't pulled away quite quick enough to avoid being splattered with the pink mech's transfluid, but the texture of it on his hand hadn't seemed to register to him just yet.

The enforcer had never been one for showy overloads before, though this time appeared to be a drastically different case. His own overload seemed to hit him harder than normal, accompanied by one final, brutal slam into the mech beneath him.

Sensors and circuitry that he'd frankly presumed long dead lit up with crackling sensation as his clean fist clenched and slammed knuckle-down on the countertop, cracking its surface from the force. His vents and fans rattled with the effort to cool his frame, and the rest of him shook with the effort to remain as upright as he could.

Speechless, overheated, and keenly aware of every sound and sensation, Prowl's fist slamming down rang loud in his audial. It sounded agonizing for the countertop, but for Arcee, it was pure satisfaction. It was proof that Prowl was enjoying this as much as he was, and every bit as overwhelmed.

It took the slow, painful rattle of vents to push his optics open.

"...You sound like you're about to keel over and die."

"I work hard on that," Prowl shot back after the slightest pause, intakes kicking on to try and cycle in cooler air.

"I've got extra cubes."

"I'm fine." His panel slid shut with a heavy clank, but he made no move to step away from Arcee and the counter. He finally seemed to notice the bright pink mess on his hand, making a face and trying to shake it off.

"Ah, right. Sorry about that."

Unlike Prowl, Arcee's panel remained open. He slowly slid up onto one elbow, the only indication he didn't intend to lay there all day with his legs spread. He seemed to have forgotten how to use his spine.

He gave no indication that he'd even heard the apology, and it seemed that he was trying very hard to ignore his messier hand, given he had no way to immediately remove the problem.

Prowl's closed hand, however, had moved from its small crater beside Arcee's waist. It didn't make it very far, however, as the fingers clamped down on the edge of the counter when he swayed dangerously on his feet.

That drove Arcee to sit up swiftly, shutting his panel with a sharp snap. All too quickly, the comfortable bubble of what they'd done gave way to the miserable reality of where they were.

Before he could think about it, he was putting out a hand, ready to catch the older mech if he went down.

Prowl didn't even bother to wave him off, keeping a firm grip on the counter with his "useable" hand. Surely he couldn't have drained himself this much? What was going on?

Arcee regarded him for a moment, but said nothing. He just reached into his subspace, pulled out a cube, and set it down beside Prowl's hand.

The enforcer noticed the cube as soon as it was set down, but for a moment, it honestly looked as though he wasn't going to touch it. Given their only-recently-suspended status as near enemies, everything in his training, his experience, was trying to tell him that nothing good would come of drinking it.

But, survival spoke louder.

Steadying himself with the forearm attached to the "unuseable" hand, he popped the cube open and drained it almost instantly. The whole sight was, truthfully, nothing short of pathetic.

Arcee sighed inwardly with relief.

"Like I said, I've got extras."

Prowl said absolutely nothing, but after a moment did set the empty cube aside and held his hand out for another one.

Arcee passed it to him wordlessly.

The second cube was drained even more quickly than the first, but once it was, the cube was set aside and he didn't reach for a third. His rattling had calmed to something a bit less terrifying, and he no longer shook when he shifted his weight against the counter.

The pink mech sat back on the counter, arms crossed, at a loss for what to say. When trying to get anywhere with Prowl, it paid to weigh every word.

"Don't get me wrong...I get why you didn't ask for help. But if you'd been on death's door, would you at least have pinged?"

"What would it have gotten me?" he asked. It wasn't even sarcastic.

"Fuel," Arcee answered simply.

"And what reason would I have to believe that you would actually want to keep me alive?"

"Because I never tried to kill you before, and killing people is my usual program."

_"Why_ though?" Prowl didn't look at Arcee, though clearly, this was addressed to him. "A whole _lifetime_ of killing those who wronged you, but despite your considering me an enemy, I've been spared. Why _is_ that, exactly?"

Arcee regarded him calmly, the way he always used to.

"I don't see you as an enemy."

That didn't seem to compute for Prowl. There was no trace of anger, nothing that seemed to suggest that Prowl would call him a liar. Instead, there was only... was that _confusion?_

Was that what Prowl's face looked like when he was confused? Did he even _get_ confused?

Well, Prowl wasn't laugh at him or storming off. That was...something.

It was a deeper conversation than he'd expected to have while his thighs were still wet.

Prowl glanced away from him further, both fists clenching for a split second before the fluid-covered one sprang back open. "... why."

"You know I'm not going to get offended if you wipe that off."

"... I'll just end up covered in it _and_ in dust if I make that attempt now." He shook his hand off a little as if to prove his point. "... And that isn't what I meant."

"I know." In the last of the light, Prowl certainly looked more like the dangerous bot he was than the filthy, starving wreck Arcee had watched step out of the ruins. But he didn't feel like it. "And it's perspective. I've had plenty of enemies and you're not one of them."

"... you'll excuse my confusion, considering your speaking to Optimus about the fact that I 'can't be trusted.'"

"No one in their right mind trusts you completely. That doesn't make you an enemy."

"You certainly trust me enough to be vulnerable around me for extended periods of time." He indicated the pink mech's recently-closed panel with his still-open hand. "So what does that mean?"

"What do you _think_ it means?"

"... don't you start with that. If I knew what it meant, I would say it."

Damn it, Prowl.

"It means that even after everything, I trust you enough to meet you alone and then interface with you and like you enough that I don't want to see you starve. Is the idea _really_ that far-fetched?"

"... in theory, yes, but since it just happened... not really, no."

"Then there you go."

The effect was given a slight edge of something much creepier by his missing optic, but there was no mistaking Prowl's "what in the expired Pit is this insanity" expression.

"... so what does that mean?"

Arcee scratched the back of his neck, which did not itch in the slightest. His optics were everywhere but on Prowl.

"...Don't make me say it."

"Say what?"

"That you matter to me."

"... What?"

"You heard me. I'm not saying it again."

Prowl seemed honestly unsure of how to respond, wings flicking in something close to irritation.

Where was this "you matter to me" nonsense when he was risking his hide to retrieve Alpha Trion, listening to Arcee and Optimus literally talk about him behind his back?

More importantly, why wasn't this making any sense? He had his facts, of course he did, but... they somehow still didn't add up properly. Sure, Arcee had said it but how much could he really trust that? Then again... there was no reason to doubt them...

Was he...? Yes, it looked like he was. This was very much a Prowl thing, and one he recognized well.

True to his word, Arcee said nothing. Best to just let him process.

He was silent for quite some time, wings flicking periodically and different bits twitching.

Finally, the foreign phrase. "... I don't understand."

It wasn't fair. Not in any sense.  How could Arcee be expected to answer that when he barely understood it himself? But the frustration in his spark never quite reached his optics. Slowly, he rose from the counter, crossing over to Prowl smoothly enough that he knew he wasn't about to reach for his swords.

Then he took the enforcer's face gently between his hands, and without looking back, made his second foolish decision of the day.

Prowl's frame stopped its twitching entirely, going incredibly still. In fact, his wings stiffened, sticking almost straight out before giving two quick, uncertain flicks.

Still, despite the apparently-negative reaction... he didn't shove the pink mech away. In fact, after a moment, Arcee would actually find one of Prowl's hands resting almost-affectionately in the small of his back.

He pulled back only slightly, voice impossibly soft. He didn't dare to raise it up any louder, though he was't certain what the consequences of doing so would be.

"...Get it now?"

Primus help him, Arcee didn't know what he was going to do if he didn't.

"... starting to," Prowl responded after a moment.

Arcee smiled.

"Good enough for me."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tattoo ink, BDSM mention, some light Dom/sub in this one. Set during Prowl and Arcee's co-vigilante days.

They'd put a bit of a rush on cobbling together an office space for him in the remnants of the Kimia facility, and most 'bots would have been grateful for the thought.

Most 'bots also had the capacity to be grateful even for gestures that had logical explanations attached.

"Complaint, concern, complaint, complaint, legitimate concern... complaint... I can't even read this one, how can someone be so illiterate..." Datapads tossed into piles on his desk, one by one, accompanied by a verbal confirmation of their contents. He'd been at this for most of the day, and frankly, it was starting to take a toll on his patience.

Like a rangy stray cybercat, Arcee was known to come and go as he pleased -- and seldom when he was called. He would work with Prowl when it suited him and not a minute before or after. Also like a cybercat, he had gotten into the habit of taking advantage of fuel and a roof where it was offered (or very nearly offered, as was often the case with Prowl.)

The slide of the window was about as close to a knock as Prowl was going to get.

Ever-paranoid, as usual, he was on his feet in an instant, whipping around to face the window, his primary sidearm drawn and aimed in record time. His icy optics narrowed as he found the pink plating and put his weapon away. "Would it actually kill you to give some warning?"

"Probably," said Arcee, oozing effortlessly into the room and straightening up. "I got your names, by the way." It had taken him just over a full day to do so – toeing the rim of a new record for him.

Prowl shoved a blank datapad in his direction. "Write them down. It's been a very long day and I don't want to forget them."

"Yeah, sure, I'll get right on that." Arcee set the blank datapad on the table without sparing it so much as a glance and strolled into the next room to help himself to a cube.

Why was he surprised? "Is this why you came up here instead of comming with the names?"

"Comms are easy to intercept." He drained half the cube in a deep, ravenous gulp. "But...yeah, pretty much."

"Coded frequencies are notably harder to trace, at the least." Prowl followed him into the other room, grabbing a cube of his own. An involuntary twitch, however, spilled a generous mouthful's worth down his front, the fuel splattering onto plating and sinking into otherwise-invisible grooves in it.

Arcee looked up from his repast -- something he was not particularly prone to doing once he'd begun drinking. "You okay?"

"Fine. Cable spasm. Happens when your wings realize you're actually not letting them crack under their own weight."

"Is that something that usually happens to wings?"

"They get used to the idea that they might when there's no back support on a damn chair, so they've been subjected to an entire day's worth of uncontrolled slouching."

"Have you...you know, thought of getting a chair with back support?"

"We're looking. The needs of one frametype are of little concern to the rebuilding effort."

"Huh," Arcee said thoughtfully. He polished off the remainder of the fuel, wiped his mouth roughly, and in the process, found his attention drawn to the fuel pooling in the faint etching on Prowl's plating. "I didn't know you had a tattoo."

"It wasn't relevant." Prowl glanced around for a rag, plucking one off the counter and cleaning up as much of the fuel as he could. What had leaked into the engraving, however, would probably only come off in the wash rack. "Is that a problem?"

Arcee had yet to look up. The rag took care of the thin capillaries of fuel running southwards, but the words on his abdomen were iridescent pink and prominent as day. "No. No, it is not."

Prowl continued. "I was rather close with a body artist before the war. So long as he didn't interrupt my work, I allowed him to practice: claimed it kept his hands steadier if he got regular practice.

"That a fact?" Arcee drained the last few nonexistant drops of his empty cube, fighting for nonchalance and missing by a mile. "...Got any other tattoos hidden away?"

"'Hidden: kept out of sight; concealed.' I have eight in total. Some are concealed, yes."

"And…what are the odds of me getting to see _those_ splashed with energon?"

"Those ones are pigmented: fuel doesn't need to be wasted on them."

Arcee had a reply for that, but his throat had gone curiously dry. It was times like these he almost wished he'd taken up with an easier bot to navigate -- one who was better flirting and more consistently appreciative of being jumped.

"... you're going to stand there like that until I point them all out, aren't you? Or are you only interested in my concealed ones."

"Oh no, no, feel free to point them all out. I've got nowhere else to be today."

Prowl gestured vaguely to the inside of his right arm, tilting it so the plating caught the grooves of another phrase etched there, and pointed out a small symbol on the inside of his left wrist. "If you want to see the others, I suggest you write those names down for me."

The glimpses on his arms were just enough to quash the attitude Arcee might have normally shot back with. Rolling his optics only vaguely, he snatched up the datapad and tapped out a short, rapid list of names.

"There."

Prowl took them. "Now, was that such a chore?" he asked, punctuating the question with a hand flick that called attention again to the carved symbol on his wrist.

He leaned back onto the desk, the etching on his chest catching the light again and shining in pink accent. When he brought his hands down to rest the heels of them on the edge of the desk, he also shifted his weight slightly so that another set of etchings caught the light in just the right way, these ones further down, in a far more suggestive location.

'Frag off, Prowl' was the proper response to something like that, and it hung right on Arcee's lips. But the sharp movement of the enforcer's hand caught his optic, held it tight, and rewarded it richly for its troubles.

The etchings were impossibly subtle, pretentious in a way that was hardly surprising, considering their owner _( _'Before all else, be armed',_ Prowl? Really?) and Arcee had never been one to boast a tattoo fetish. But just knowing that they'd always been there...that Prowl, big bad enforcer Prowl, was absolutely covered in them and Arcee had never even known...

When he raised a hand to reach for them, he was surprised to find it trembling.

Prowl didn't seem as though he was going to move away, though he'd certainly proven himself cruel enough to do so. He merely seemed amused at the sight of that shaking hand. "Is there something I can do for you?"

Arcee swallowed hard as his fingers made contact with the hair-thin lines of the glyphs -- tracing and re-tracing them, looking slightly lost.

"I'm good."

Prowl gave an unsettling approximation of a chuckle, surprisingly allowing the contact with no visible reaction for a short time, before his hand closed around Arcee's forearm. "Yes?"

Arcee scowled, but didn't flinch away. "What?" he groused.

"I do know what you look like when you want something. However, I'm not a mind reader. You'll have to be specific."

"Am I really being that subtle about it?"

"Not quite, but I'd be more likely to give you what you want if you ask nicely."

"I want to run my glossa over your tattoos like my life depends on it." Surely that was nice enough?

Not enough for Prowl, apparently. “Now, that'll just get you far too heated up to just stop there, won't it?" he taunted. "Though I suppose I _could_ just make it easier on you and let you right at the hidden ones."

"Good plan. Let's go with that."

Prowl’s panel audibly unlocked and slid back with, suspiciously, far less of a fuss than he normally would have put up. He rested more of his weight against the desk, nudging his hip plating slightly more forward. Arcee hit his knees, palms on his thighs, hungry for a closer look. The etchings here weren't much easier to see, black pigment on dark gray mesh, but they were there. At the top of his array, above the casing that housed his spike: I don't only own objects.

Between that casing and his valve, however, was a slightly more interesting one: a series of glyphs that unmistakably spelled out a single word. _Master._

Arcee chuckled breathlessly, lips to those upper glyphs, mouth watering for the weight of the enforcer’sspike on his glossa. "You're one fragged up bot, Prowl."

"Oh? How so?" Well aware of precisely what Arcee was looking at, Prowl figured that he could at least taunt him for a solid klik or so more by feigning innocence. But Arcee wasn't interested in debating schematics. He leaned in, optics offlined, and dragged the tip of his glossa up the soft grey mesh of Prowl's valve.

The taller mech's hips twitched involuntarily, and the cover of his spike casing unlatched and opened before he could even consider making a conscious effort to keep it closed.

Arcee hummed his approval, letting it reach all the way down to the depths of his engine, rumbling softly through him. Through hooded optics, he watched the spike pressurize, reading the delicate glyph-work tattooed along the shaft ...

And then ruined the effect spectacularly by snorting with laughter.

"'Lucky you?'"

"It's probably getting harder and harder to believe that every glyph below my waist was not my idea," Prowl acknowledged, almost seeming... embarrassed? "As I said. As long as my artist wasn't interrupting my work, I let him practice."

"I mean, it's not _wrong._ " Arcee cupped one hand affectionately around the side of Prowl's spike, stroking round and round the head. Finally, he gave himself what he'd been itching for and dove in, tracing each dip and curve with the tip of his glossa.

"I haven't had any complaints," Prowl agreed, shuddering slightly under that glossa. He hadn't realized how much he'd needed this until now, and it was killing him.

For a time, Arcee was content just to suck and trace that tattoo. He groaned softly, sluttily against it, almost irritated with himself for being so wanton, but feeling very lucky indeed. And when a sudden idea took him, there wasn't a thing to do but to give into it.

He reached up for the cube Prowl had left sitting on the table. No more than a dreg was left at the bottom, but that was all he needed.

"Can I?"

"Can you what?" It was a genuine question, no trace of sarcasm. With his optics shuttered for the moment, Prowl hadn't seen him take the cube, but he did online one optic to glance down at him.

"Lick it off you?"

"Go ahead," he chuckled, offlining his optic again. As if he would have a problem with letting Arcee have a further excuse to keep his glossa on his spike.

The pink mech grinned; he hadn't entirely expected Prowl would go for this, but he'd certainly make it worth his while. The fuel caught the light, shining neon as it drizzled and pooled in those filthy etchings. Before it could drip too freely, he trapped it with his lips, lapping and chasing and softly, softly sucking.

If anyone asked, Prowl would be honest. He hadn't expected that. And damn was it nice.

One hand settled on the back of Arcee's head, and his fans kicked up slightly.

Arcee's own fans had been turning for some time, but the steadily mounting ache behind his panel would not be denied. He unlocked it without missing a beat, hissing at the air on his pressurizing spike just as he took Prowl fully into his mouth.

Prowl actually cursed aloud, blunt digits digging into Arcee's helm. It was a deeply victorious sound.

The pink mech settled into a productive rhythm, glossa working the head.

"You're awfully hungry today, aren't you?"

Arcee pulled his head up just long enough to reply. "Don't push it."

"You know what I mean," he said, smearing slickness up the length of Prowl's shaft with his hand.

"I didn't quite realize you enjoyed sucking spike this much," he teased, releasing the back of Arcee's head for a moment to adjust his grip. "I should let you do it more often."

"Cool it, Prowl. I'm not the bot who carved 'Master' on your wetware."

"It was his idea, I simply didn't argue with it."

"Mmm," Arcee mused noncommittally. Without a word of warning, he plunged downwards, taking Prowl's spike all the way to the back of his intake.

Prowl hissed, bucking his hips against the pink mech's mouth. This time, Arcee did not let up, nor allow himself to be distracted. His hands took up a lazy roaming of Prowl's lower body, tracing his tattoos -- a sharp contrast to the hot, wet intensity he was sucking him off with.

It was the same focus he applied when he was modding weapons. It was a little alarming.

The enforcer growled, letting his head loll back. "You know, you're well on your way to being bent over this desk." Arcee rumbled his approval into Prowl's array. Just in case the way he was steadily dripping transfluid left any room for doubt. "Is that what you're after?"

"Frag, yes..."

Prowl chuckled, mouth twisting into a smirk. "So needy today, aren't we?"

 Arcee favored him with a rather impressive glare at that.

"Are you going to come up from there, or am I going to have to make you?"

"Well, that's a real dilemma. Why don't we think about that one for a while?"

Prowl only cocked an optic ridge in response.

Bracing his weight against the desk, he pressed the tip of his pede against the pink mech's spark chamber and knocked him backwards to the floor, taking a knee directly beside him and pressing down on his abdominal plating with one hand as if that alone would keep him down there.

Arcee, of course, could have ripped his leg off; could have popped his knee joint out with two fingers and a thumb. He could have made Prowl painfully, excruciatingly aware of how bad of an idea it was to treat him like this.

Prowl knew it. And that was enough for Arcee.

He remained on his back strut and under that crude facsimile of control, optics dark and dangerous. His legs parted, making a shameless display of himself.

"You gonna frag me anytime soon?"

 "You're not making a very good case for yourself," he taunted, his free hand reaching down for the exposed array.

After a moment, he pressed a knuckle firmly to the pink mech's exterior node as a blunt digit slipped into him as far as he could manage.

Arcee hissed through gritted dentae. Prowl's attitude was horrid, but his digits were thick and heavy, and his back arched in encouragement.

That digit curled and uncurled in slow, lazy strokes, making sure to put as much pressure against the soft mesh as possible with each curl.

"You can't possibly be this soaked just from seeing a few tattoos," he mused. "What, do you just hold out until you come here?"

"I spent the last day and a half hiding in vents and digging through scrap code looking for your names, but sure, whatever makes you happy." Normally, Arcee liked to inject a bit more bite into his sass, but it was difficult when Prowl was stroking him exactly the way he liked best. If his voice caught and his vents hitched, that was beyond his control.

Exactly what part of that made Prowl chuckle was unclear, as was the part of it that made him pull his hand away.

"Hm, that's right, you did, didn't you? I suppose you do deserve a reward for that..."

"I get rewards now? I'm really moving up in the world." He shifted against the tile, bracing himself for what he dearly, dearly hoped was coming.

Prowl didn't make it a point to be predictable in this respect, but in this case, he couldn't be bothered not to be. The attitude was ignored as both hands clamped around Arcee's hips, and the enforcer buried his spike to the hilt in the pink mech.

Arcee's breath tumbled from his vents. Words failed him; sensations that did not fall under the umbrella of heat and stretch failed him.

How long had it been since they'd last done this -- a week, at most? He'd thought he'd gone and gotten a better handle of his head, so how in Pit's name did he become the kind of mech of swapped paint in the middle of an office floor?

If such thoughts ever crossed Prowl's mind--or if he cared to entertain them, at least--was impossible to tell for certain. He carried himself as crisp, rigid, professional, yet it was instances like this that proved undoubtedly that he was, in fact, capable of being anything but. He drew back, slowly, torturously, and then pushed in again the same way, and the difficult-to-spot hunger glinted in his optics,  a reminder that that hunger could quickly and easily grow into predatory ravenousness.

After all, it had been about a week for him, as well.

Arcee locked his legs around Prowl's waist, growling low in his throat. It was a challenging sound, demanding and hungry.

It was not an affectionate sound. But the fact remained that he wouldn't have been here if it were anyone else.

Prowl smirked, and the hunger in his optics flared.

 

All at once, palms flat on the tile for balance, he struck a fast, brutal pace, biting back, for the moment, any taunting that could wait until the mech beneath him was close to melting.

Arcee raked his back with blunt digits, broad scuffs delving across white paint. His body rocked and his ceiling node mercilessly battered, it was a fight just to keep his optics from rolling back. He could feel the scorching heat of his own array, and the lubricant rolling in slick rivulets down his thighs.

He wouldn't last long, but he'd certainly put everything he had into trying.

Clawing at the back of a mech with doorwings, specifically, was rarely a good call. It caused most of them to cringe away from the damage to vital parts of their build. With Prowl, it usually just served to annoy.

Without missing a beat, Prowl shifted them both, allowing himself slightly-deeper access while leaning slightly up so that the offending digits were at least a little further away from his doorwings.

Arcee blinked past the tide of pleasure and registered what he'd just done. He dropped his hands, though not without a grumble.

"Not going to scrape your damn doorwings..."

It was hard to sound bitter when the new position was subjecting sensors he hadn't been entirely sure he had to a deep, thorough, exquisite battering.

"Can't blame me for a reflex, can you?"

Someone who didn't know the enforcer might have mistaken that for something almost genuine. Because, of course, it seemed silly to place blame on someone for a reflex. But anyone who knew Prowl, especially well enough that he would even consider paneling up for them, would know that his only reflexes were combat related. Every movement of his body was carefully-orchestrated, everything entirely voluntary.

"Point," Arcee breathed. His ability to care was rapidly deserting him. He settled for scratching at Prowl's floor instead, tossing his head as his frame began to pop with static. _"Scrap...scrap, scrap..."_

Oh, Prowl was only now drawing out that little bit of a curse? Surely he could do better than that. After all, he wasn't entirely sparkless.

Dentae scraped over a solid plate on Arcee's neck, not going for the cabling just yet. That would just be too easy.

Arcee whimpered. He didn't mean to, but his intentions were a moot point when it came to his neck. That fleeting contact was enough to send a jolt down the front of his frame, prickling through his thighs and array. He tilted his neck, silently pleading.

Ah, yes, there it was.

Prowl’s dentae bit less-than-gently into a cable, a heavy hand braced on the pink mech's hip as he shifted his hips ever-so-slightly, aiming to ensure that the top ridges of his spike brushed the other's outer node.

That Prowl was allowed near his neck at all spoke volumes. That he was able to drive him wild this way even more.

Arcee wailed at the ceiling -- an inarticulate amalgamation of noise and traces of Prowl's name. He bucked up, hovering perilously on the precipice for a moment, and then crashed over the edge into a veil of white static. His valve cinched down hard around Prowl's spike, toeing the line of painful, dragging on and on and on.

 Prowl's dentae merely tightened their grip on that cable as he worked Arcee through his overload, his own hitting him quietly and without spectacle.

Riding out an overload was one of the few things Arcee took his sweet time on. It was some time before he onlined his optics...more still before he spoke, lips cocked into a weary smirk.

"Well... _that_ was fun."

In stark contrast to the pink mech's post-frag lounging, the enforcer was already back on his feet, rummaging in his desk drawer for a spare rag as his panel clicked shut. Arcee picked himself up off the floor, wincing as he clicked his own panel shut. That called for a shower, and preferably soon.

He grabbed and subspaced an extra cube of fuel. "I'm taking this for the road."

Prowl waved him off, already cleaning up as he returned to work.

And without further parting words or acknowledgement that they'd been fragging on the floor, Arcee clambered out the window he'd come in through.


End file.
